Sorta made sense to me until I read the bit about her being a catholic... blows my mind every time I hear someone educated and liberal admit to being a catholic or republican, but I guess if you're that deeply entrenched in belief, even education can't get you out of it? Anyway that's a topic for another thread I guess.

For anyone suffering from depression, I found this blog both amusing and insightful: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

This is a problem I have with a lot of the LGBT community. Why should you find it offensive? For me this is a combination of over-sensitivity, and insensititivity. However much you might hate them, labels are necessary. Most people don't know anything other than their heterosexual life; terms like 'gay', 'camp', and 'transexual' describe stuff other than the norm. It's very common that those who are gay are also camp; the fact that some people who are camp are straight, and some that are gay aren't, doesn't change campness from being a thing just as much as gayness is. 'Straight-acting' is simply describing someone who is attracted to the same sex but hides it. I tend to hide it, hence I am mostly straight-acting. It's not meant by anyone to be offensive, and there's no history wrapped up in the word, like n****r or k**e. It's just a straight-up description of a legitimate thing.

The straight-acting mindset? For example, I objectify women. I don't like it about myself, but it's so entrenched in me that I can't stop myself doing it. I have little romantic interest in men, but like most other straight men, I am largely superficial when it comes to my interest in women.

Like it or not - and I really can't see why you wouldn't like it - society has norms defined by the majority. Heteronormativity means the underrepresentation of homosexual activity and relationships. That doesn't mean ignoring straight culture, which is not just a thing, but it's the most prevalent thing in the world.

Just to expand on this, I believe that it's important to be militant about offensive terms, but it weakens the LGBT community's position when everyone gets butthurt about stuff that's unimportant. Political correctness has been a massive force for good, but it's possible to take it too far.

You say you have no romantic interest in men, but also say you are attracted to the same sex (male) but hide it.

So what is your attraction to males then, purely sexual? If you are capable of being sexual attracted to another man, how is it you are incapable of being romantically attracted to another man?

This interests me in particular, because my initial realization of my bi-sexuality was, if anything, the opposite of yours. I knew I was still only physically and sexually attracted to the female body, but I found my self romantically in love with another guy.

I'm not incapable of it, I just feel it a LOT less strongly than I do with women. If I were to put numbers on it - which aren't quite meaningless, they're estimations, merely to illustrate the way it feels for me - it's roughly a 70/30 split in sexual terms and 90/10 split in romantic terms, i.e. 70% of the people I'm sexually attracted to are women and 90% of those I'm romantically attracted to are women.

I worked out that I was bi when I was 13, about 6 months after I remember being attracted to girls, after I had a dream about a friend. I recall it being not in the slightest bit confusing. When I was 19 I had a confusing couple of weeks when I thought I was actually gay but I was in a bit of a messed up place then.

In general I have had an emotionally turbulent puberty + adulthood; it feels like ~ 1% of that is attributable to my sexuality, and for that I consider myself extremely lucky.

This isn't at all unusual for those who identify as bisexual, male or female. They are often more strongly attracted to one gender, or are sexually attracted to both but romantically attracted to only one.

The fact that you identify as bisexual when you could easily "hide" as straight is commendable (IMO), but I think it would be beneficial if you were more out as being bisexual.

Labels are useful, but also dangerous. Standard catch 22.

Right - I've had it on my fb profile page since the very beginning that I am interested in men and women, and I'm out to most people who know me well, but I decided that wasn't enough and outed myself properly over FB and twitter last night - 'I decided I'm not out enough, and it is important. I'm bisexual.'

Felt good. I always get this idea that peoples reactions will be worse than they actually are. I'm sure that's the same with everyone. The worst reaction I ever had was from a girl I'd dated for a couple of weeks back when I was 18; we saw each other about a week after we split up. It was our end of school leaving party. I told her, her jaw dropped, she looked at me aghast, took a couple of steps back, jaw dropped even further, shook her head, turned round, and never spoke to me again. Lolz, I think I broke her brain.

Wazz,

I respect where you come from about the overly-PC society that we live in, but I think you might be underestimating the amount of attention that the term "straight-acting" has gotten in the LGBT community in the recent past / present. It seems like you are not using it in exactly the same way that it is being used by (I think) mostly gay men who are trying to get across how masculine/butch they are. I find issue with these men basically trying to separate themselves from "sissy" gays by calling themselves straight-acting because I think it is an act of self-hate and an attempt to conform to standard gender roles that our society (US, especially) has created.

I hope that was clear. I think your use of "straight-acting" as a bisexual is different and less harmful, but maybe you can see why it is more of a charged term than you thought.

Dan Savage, gay author/activist/podcaster extraordinaire, talks about this a few times in his works. If you feel like hearing a more eloquent explanation, he'd be a pretty good person to go to. There are also plenty of blogs/articles on the web that discuss this in greater detail as well.

And, in my opinion:

Yes, I was unaware of that. But the point is that words have both meaning and context. Just because a very select minority choose to use a term in an offensive way doesn't mean the entire meaning of the word should become wrapped up in that; that's selfish. The word is descriptive and there is no other quick way of describing 'one who is not camp'. There is no offensive meaning wrapped up in that. If someone says 'you guys are sissys. I'm a straight-acting gay!' then clearly there is offensive meaning in that, so get offended at the offense, don't make the word unusable for others!

Off topic, but when I was younger, I heard Ru Paul on the radio. Sounded like a male to me, but he was talking about getting panties, so I was confused. One day, I asked my father and uncle if Ru Paul was male or female, and they chuckled, which really only added to my confusion. Then they explained and all made sense.

Btw, this is the first time I've heard the word camp. You're from the UK, right? I wonder if I just haven't heard the term or if it's just not an American thing.

What were you wearing?


You should have said "it's ok, you don't have to be for me to suck you off" or something to that effect imo.

GL Vanessa...she has a big chip lead in the $2500 10game with 6 left

3 left, monster chip lead. #leggo #rainbowgrind

congrats vanessa on bracelet #2

Venessa Selbst is now the first women to win a bracelet in an open even since... Venessa Selbst!


You can see why everyone is always so quick to label her the best female player. Although this evidence is somewhat results oriented obv and other results such as Maria Ho's runner up finish last year, and Amanda Musumeci's 2nd this year are of course great as well, still...

Solid stuff, no doubt!

Check out: http://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/ - and many of the subreddits on there (if you all don't already reddit). Lots of cool posts and people.

RMC, please be safe. You make me a touch nervous. This is coming from a 22 y.o. gay who has certainly made mistakes/dumb decisions, so hopefully you understand that this isn't coming from some pedestal. Peace!

This reminds me of the time I spent the first half of Christmas in the hospital, then spent the early evening in a fight/argument with my ex-boyfriend, but then finally at night went out to the club hooked up with this really stunning t-girl and then went back to my place with her and we had some...fun.

So at least my night ended well that time, but for most of the day that Christmas was sounding kind of like your b-day.

So I've got this friend from high school who I am pretty confident is gay, but to my knowledge he is not out to anyone. He is a jock / sports fanatic, and we come from a kind of small town without LGBT presence in any meaningful way. He posts anti-homophobia things all over social media, doesn't date women, and just reminds me of myself in a lot of ways before I came out.

I really want to be supportive in some way, because I know I was quite miserable in his position only a couple years ago. We aren't that close anymore (we pretty much only interacted through poker in HS, and I'm now out of college), but it's been showing up more on Twitter / Facebook in the last couple of months.

Is there some way I can approach him? What is my line here? I'm gonna meditate on it.

In before:

Does he know you're out? I would tell him that you're here for him if he needs to talk about anything - anything.

BTW I think I worked out what the problem is. These 'straight-acting' gay types who like to belittle effeminate gays are using the wrong word - they mean 'macho', but don't use it because it has negative connotations. Which is obviously selfish, because now both macho and straight-acting have negative connotations and we're running out of descriptive words.

I'm a little upset right now because I've 'misplaced' a dead(?) bug while trying to dispose of him just now, so I need to refocus my negative thoughts to avoid freaking out too much (semi-edit: problem solved while I worked on this post!). I was going to post this before anyway, but this was back when 2+2 went down so I had to hold off for 2 weeks or whatever and that was enough time to kill my desire.

I'm struggling to figure out how to give the appropriate background here without saying too much, so I'll probably just say too much. I'm a psychiatry resident (graduated med school, but still in training), and sometimes I do overnight shifts in the psych hospital. At nights, things are slower and there's less staff around, so it's more of a relaxed atmosphere. One of the nurses I will sometimes work with at nights is a guy we'll call Joe. He's a big guy (as in 'gym everyday' not 'burger king everyday'), probably late 30s? And he's vocally homophobic.

First incident was when we had a teenaged patient come in that was male, but dressed like a female (very well done, you couldn't tell) and went by a girl's name and will surely have the appropriate surgery once she hits the right age. I don't know if homophobic accurately describes what Joe and another staff member were saying, but I honestly don't know what the appropriate term is. It was nothing directly to the patient, but it was certainly going too far. Their insistence on using 'he' instead of 'she' was bad enough. I really wasn't expecting to have to explain gender identity to other people working in the mental health field longer than I, but I did, and it didn't even help to get them to better accommodate the situation.

Another time, Joe and this same other staff member were talking to each other with the words f****t and gay flowing freely.

Last night, Joe started talking about how 'queer' the macho boys are these days, with their tight jeans and long hair. He made some effeminate motions and statements to show me what he was talking about.

I've talked to some other people about this in general, and it's certainly not just me that notices Joe's almost proud homophobia. I'll have to work with him on random nights for another year. I don't see him changing unfortunately (until he comes out himself...). I don't know if what he says upsets me or surprises me or both, but either way I feel like continuing to do nothing is the wrong approach. I probably blew my chances though as the incident with the transgender patient was likely my best shot to bring this up and get some action.

I mainly just needed to get this out to other people, but if you've got advice that would obviously be appreciated too.

i think as long as the transgender isnt present, it doesnt really matter if he calls "her" he or she, f****t or whatever, no matter when it bothers you.
you could simply please/tell him to stop the swearing like f****t, but when he calls him a gaylord (isnt it more funny than swearing? im not a native speaker), you hardly have any arguments.
its cheap, narrow-minded and simply wrong, but he can talk however he wants if noone is affected, its his own choice.
as soon as he says anything like "hey boy, come over here" or anything like that (calling him male somehow) when "she" is present, you have the chance to talk to him for an actual reason, or even get/give him a warning or preferably tell next higher authority to make sure that this wont happen again.
at that point its ofc serious harm that he does, esp in a situation like this.
his insecurity towards this is sad, but not all homophobes are clost-gays and you shouldnt try to cut his freedom of speech, as long as "she" isnt hearing it.
probs for your attitude, but sometimes you simply have to ignore idiots, if they dont do any harm.

too late to edit a single "him" to "her". (no homophobe)

I disagree with you HU4H. It seems like you are implying that as long as you don't offend someone to his or her face, it's an okay thing to do. I don't think most people would agree with that line at all. I can't even really tell if you are leveling here, but shwhatever.

Are you out to anyone at work, GMan? Sorry if that has been mentioned already in the thread, but it's tough to keep everyone's stories... straight.

I guess that kind of brings me to another thing I wanted to ask about in this thread - being out as a professional. I'm going to be an M1 this year, so I've been doing a bit of thinking on this topic. I obviously have a long way to go, but I hope some others can give some insight on this.

Initially, I don't understand - I was as clear as I could be. Ask some Q's + I'll try to give some A's.

Wazz, he knows I'm out. Also, I don't really see a problem with the word "macho," and I don't think I'd be alone on this one. It's just another term for masculine. Plenty of internet gays describe themselves as effeminate, too.

End mouthful (and it's not even the good kind )